Citing the risk of a missile attack on the United States, President Donald Trump signed an executive order Monday night for the Defense Department to deploy and maintain a so-called "Iron Dome." The order requires Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to submit plans for a next-generation missile defense shield within 60 days.
“I’m directing our new Secretary of Defense to immediately begin the construction of a state-of-the-art Iron Dome missile defense shield, which will be able to protect Americans,” he said Monday evening an event with House Republicans at his hotel on Doral, Florida. “We protect other countries, but we don’t protect ourselves.”
The executive order cites the threat of attack by ballistic, hypersonic and cruise missiles and other advanced aerial attacks, saying they are “the most catastrophic threat facing the United States.”
Israel currently operates an Iron Dome system to intercept incoming rockets that has been routinely deployed during its conflicts with Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran over the past 15 months.
The United States already has some ground-based missile-interception capability with 44 systems deployed in Alaska and California. The Defense Department plans to add to those systems over the next three years.
"The Iron Dome for America," as the executive order calls it, should be able to defend the U.S. from “next-generation aerial attacks from peer, near-peer and rogue adversaries,” it said without naming specific countries.
China and Russia are the only two countries known to have intercontinental ballistic missiles that could reach the United States.
The executive order cites former President Ronald Reagan’s efforts to build a nuclear attack defense system in the 1980s as leading to technological advancements toward an Iron Dome. The Strategic Defense Initiative, also known as "Star Wars," was given up in 1993 because it cost too much and lacked political support after Reagan left office.
The Iron Dome executive order calls for accelerated deployment of systems to sense and track hypersonic and ballistic missiles, as well as the development and deployment of space-based interceptors and systems to defeat missile attacks before they are launched. It also directs the Defense Department to secure a supply chain for the necessary components of such a system.
Hegseth is directed to work with the director of the Office of Management and Budget to submit an Iron Dome funding plan to the president for inclusion in the 2026 fiscal year budget.